6th week already...

I am currently in my 6th week as a second year graduate student. I have since moved to a new office space (room 213) with just one other graduate student instead of 10. I like it, but it really leaves you out of the loop with all the first years who are housed in our former office space: room 208. Most of the second years have filtered into new offices as well. Two of my former office mates are located next to me and it is nice to still be able to talk. I am taking 3 courses in addition to a required half credit seminar that is not applied to our graduation. They are: Geography Field Methods, Environmental Management, and Advanced Spatial Analysis. I am once again the lab coordinator for the Intro to Physical Geography labs and also teach two sections. I was also assigned as the teaching assistant for the Forest Ecology lab as well as a research assistant for 4 hours a week. I have continued my duties as the Graduate Colloquium Coordinator this semester as well as taken on a new position as the graduate representative on the Student Advisory Committee.

My thesis research has been moving along well. Since my last post the problems with the new growth chamber have been fixed and I am currently on trial 2 of 3. I completed the first trial in which the samaras were subjected to 7 degrees Celsius. They are now germinating (if they are viable and able) at a temperature of 1 degree Celsius. I have completed my first year thesis field work as well. I went to the U.P. this August with my advisor and an undergraduate (Christine) in order to obtain all the first year density counts and heights on the seedlings that germinated within my plots. After the U.P. trip we proceeded up to Canada for two weeks, where I assisted my professors with their research and children. This is my third year working with them up in Canada, but my first year in which I didn’t have any of my own research up there. Later, Josh and Christine visited my local central Illinois site in order to get the density counts and height for those plots. Now it’s just a waiting game for the field work related to my thesis until next summer.

I am overwhelmed and extremely busy most days…but it all seems to work out somehow! I just take it one day at a time…

Ongoing Crisis in Room 215…

To date, I’ve had to swap my experiment to and from the new growth chamber three times since the first freezing incident. Finally, after trying everything the company who sold the department the machine instructed us to do, there is someone here to do a check up on the chamber. Turns out the chamber wasn’t acting up simply because of the nature of my experiment…which is a good thing! Apparently, the refrigeration unit was not functioning properly, so the guy is looking for a leak and is going to fix it (today hopefully)…YEA! Currently, my experiment is being housed in the old growth chamber that may stop working at any minute, since it is actually quite old and temperamental (hence the need to purchase the new growth chamber!). So far however, the good ol’ temperamental growth chamber has been holding a constant temperature and is acting as a great surrogate for my samaras. After today, I am hoping I’ll never have to worry about checking for ice build up in the chamber! We'll see! If everything works properly from here on out, then things aren’t so bad! I am glad this mishap occurred at the beginning of the experiment, because otherwise the consequences may have been more detrimental.

Crisis in room 215!

In conducting field work, I have learned that everything you plan will probably have to be altered in some way in order to account for the unknowns that occur in the field! Lab work apparently is not void of these alterations and mishaps, as this is yet another example of research not going as planned!

Apparently, all the moisture from my first germination trial run is “too taxing” on the new growth chamber I am using. On Monday (yesterday), I came in to check whether the contraptions that we constructed in order to keep the samaras moist had actually worked over the weekend. The temperature on the growth chamber was at 5.9°C, when it was supposed to be at the set temperature of 5°C. I thought perhaps it was simply within the fluctuation range of the machine, but when I came in today (Tuesday) to check on it the temperature was all the way up to 6.9°C, which seemed unacceptable since what I wanted it to be set for was 5°C. We called the company and that’s what they told us, I have too much moisture in the chamber for the current cycle of the fans. Therefore, I had to remove my experiments in order for all the ice to melt from the fans and then reset the fans to cycle between cool and defrost faster so that it can keep up better. It put a slight kink in my experiment, but I was able to temporarily move my experiments to the older growth chamber until tomorrow when we can readjust the new one. We also thought it best if we reassign this trial to be the 7°C trial instead of the 5°C trial, because the temperature seemed to range closer to 7°C than it did 5°C. Oh the woes of research…and I thought lab work would run much smoother than field work!

On the plus side however, the contraptions that were designed to keep the germination paper moist for longer so as to reduce the frequency needed for watering the samaras seemed to work like a charm. I finished assembling all the experiments on Friday and when I checked on Monday they were still very moist! At least that seems successful thus far!